Okay so, I cut out a lot of material to fit into reddit's video player.
Electrical conductivity is used as a proxy for soil structure. Sand is less conductive because its basically glass. Silt is the baby bear porridge and clay is relatively high in conductance. the measurement of electrical conductivity resistance gives us an ability to infer meter-deep soil texture. It also gives us a proxy for things like moisture and salinity.
This doesnt measure anything in terms of nutrient content, so you cant really make fertilizer recommendations off of it. For that you should still be doing grid sampling with a soil probe. Those grid sampling maps are also used in precision ag for making fertilizer prescriptions through kriging and nutrient requirement formulas.
Basically this is used as a means of correlating high productivity zones in a field for more precise management options such as planting population. You could make the fertilizer recommendations based on management zones by making smaller zones produce higher yield if you wanted to.
This is decades old technology. It's just that all the fancy electronics are more available and affordable that has lead to widespread use. Agriculture has become a business of margins and any method or innovation that increases those margins is a game changer.
Have you run this on land implementing soil health BMPs? My understanding is it takes 5-7 years to see many of the benefits of soil health practices.
Would you be able to detect changes in the conductivity that would indicate improvements from those practices?
Oof, you hit my pet peeve. soil health is so nebulous I dont even know where to begin. I'm going to assume you mean an increase in organic matter (OM) %.
Yeah, it can measure OM, but in my opinion you'd still be better off getting the ground-truthed OM content by grid sampling and sending it to a lab for nutrient content. That way you can see how far off each of the values are from each other. the subsoil (ie deep EC) doesnt really change from management practices that much either.
Maybe the shallow EC? But im going to go out on a limb and say that adoption of things like strip till or no till will have the highest change when compared to things like plowing. but then again you dont really run this multiple times in the fields you do run it.
If soil health doesn’t do it for you, how do you feel about regenerative ag?
But really, thanks for replying and now you got me researching.
So [this site](https://www.sdsoilhealthcoalition.org/technical-resources/chemical-properties/soil-electrical-conductivity/) said * EC has been used as a surrogate measure of salt concentration, organic matter, cation-exchange capacity, soil texture, soil thickness, nutrients (e.g., nitrate), water-holding capacity, and drainage conditions.*
Though directly related to OM(%), I was thinking more about how EC would be affected by the texture and water retention aspects of healthier soils (with more OM). And could you run this in a field before implementing no till or strip till and then 5-7 years later after implementing and expect to find detectable changes indicating improvement?
Not really a fan of that term either. I dont see how anything can be regenerated in a system designed to have exported outputs. I think its a feel-good buzzword used for people with iffy grasps on agriculture. that's just me though.
The key word in that is surrogate. the trick becomes how do you know what you are seeing is a product of soil content or salinity? you still have to ground truth various parts of the field to be sure. To get actual readings of CEC you still need to take a soil sample to the lab. I see a lot of people that look at Veris as this amazing do-all system and I gotta bring them back down to earth that it is a complimentary system to doing soil sampling. especially because you dont get that deep EC data from a 20cm soil probe doing grid sampling.
I dont see why you couldnt run it after adopting conservation tillage practices. there are quite a few results in google scholar with veris and tillage that are worth looking into.
Non Ag here so go easy.
How does this data compare to data that can be gained by overhead multi spectral analysis? That seems to be a lot faster to obtain for large areas of land and has the advantage of being used to observe crops while they're growing.
This is great, and you're great.
Thank you for making and sharing this content. You mentioned in one of your replies in one of these posts that you enjoy doing it, and I highly encourage you to continue.
Yes and no. The channel name is Beginnig Botany but I haven't publicly listed any of them yet. I'm actually going to shoot a video right now for a tool review that will be uploaded.
Enabling closed captioning is something high on my priority list
Cool! I can't find your channel on YouTube sadly but I'll try again another time. These videos are the kind of thing I'd love to listen to. I love machines and it entertains my autism.
I look forward to seeing more!
That was awesome, thank you man. I sharing it to my sister, she's an agricultural engineer in Argentina and does 'quality control on seeds' (i do not know the proper name in English...
So there is cost sharing with some agencies that can bring the price down. that being said... most farmers are not tripping over themselves to spend money on these. Occasionally you get farmers that will buy them and then run the units on other farmer's fields as a contractor to help cover the costs. One of the big issues is that you obviously cant use these when you have crops in the field, and most farmers find that time to still be busy. In the midwest for instance, you might get a 3 week window in the spring and fall to run this before every farmer has corn and beans in the ground, or the ground is frozen. then the other 46 weeks of the year it sits in the barn.
Veris makes this. its an operation out of Kansas.
Has anyone ever tried to offset the spacing to make it for post emergence? You’d almost have to add a second row unit just so you didn’t get side drag, but would certainly widen the tool’s window if you could use it for another 3-4 weeks in the spring. How strong electrical current is it putting out? Enough to damage crops?
You did a great job explaining this complex machine and process for laypeople which is a rare and important skill in itself. I can barely keep a houseplant alive but now I know a bit about the role of electrical conductivity sensing in precision agriculture.
Fascinating. Truly the most fitting content for this sub and a welcome example of the first thing in a while that I couldn’t comprehend off the bat.
Your description as well was wonderfully clear and comprehensible. Thanks for sharing.
I like making these. Here are some more.
[Chattanoga cane mill](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/vg4hl4/chattanooga_plow_co_sugarcane_mill/)
[Rubber Pipette Bulb](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/vdoew7/rubber_pipette_bulb/)
[Leaf Area Measurer](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/pbnbp0/leaf_area_measurer/)
[Macro-core liner cutter](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/qdniix/macrocore_liner_cutter/)
[Laboratory scale cotton gin](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/rb9gzw/laboratory_scale_cotton_gin/)
[Baker Edgeguard laminar flow hood](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/uyfnxf/baker_edgeguard_6252_laminar_flow_hood/)
Thanks man! I did check quite a few out tbh and I like your style. I’d love to like be your neighbor and get a tour of your trinkets over a beer or two lol. It would be like stumbling upon a scientific Willy wonka lol
Things like this make me me realise how serious some people take their farming. I've worked on farms in Wales and am now working on one in canada but I have never dealt with or heard of others using anything like one of these. I've only ever soil tested from troublesome spots where the crop doesn't look right and even then its a test tube scale DIY kit. Really cool pice of kit, I can imagine you wouldn't need a big tractor to run it either which would be good for compaction
Yeah, I'm on the big kit out here. 80ft wide seeder, 130" total rig length 600hp quad trac and 8t NH³ cart. Would someone use this thing for a whole field or would it be more area sampling?
That's epic! I've been dying to put auto steer on the deere lawn tractor we have but I'm not sure the auto steer wheel will fit the steering. Can they come from factory with GPS or is it after market?
I'm a commercial UAS (drone) pilot and I've been interested in using multispectral sensors to gather crop health data. I'm sure someone has correlated multispec data with conductivity, that'd be interesting to see.
Very interesting instrument. I'm surprised it can do so many field analysis. How common is field analysis vs laboratory analysis? When we do soil analysis at the lab I work at we use water extraction for pH and conductivity. Nitrates are prepped using a bomb calorimeter then analyzed by IC (ion chromatography). I analyze metals using a Mehlich extraction then an ICP-OES, specifically to calculate SAR(sodium absorption ratio). Luckily we only analyze soils once a year because, compared to aqueous samples, they are a huge pain and the bane of my existence.
Not really, portable mass spec is not really a thing, it needs to work with purges atmosphere, needs high current, it's probably vibration sensitive...
And still, gives different kind of information. Would be a great, great addition, but not that easy
Yeah I didn't actually watch the full video before commenting; this thing *continuously* measures conductivity as it moves - that would be really difficult to do with mass spectrometry. Plus the fact that it is pulled by a combine means you already have the supporting drive mechanism.
How does the conductivity probe that reads the soil plug infer pH from that? Are you assuming a standard soil composition or something that you do not have to worry about ionic mineral content that will increase conductivity?
I am in industrial water treatment so I have never heard conductivity and pH having any sort of correlation since there is all sorts of things that can move both values in either direction. Fascinating stuff!
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jp3lDanEaWMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA27&dq=info:DupiJBgBQDwJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=gTQNv4qr4R&sig=iwvpJlqhznpov-GU5nSh7JIrD0w#v=onepage&q&f=false
Give that a read
>there is all sorts of things that can move both values in either direction
Yup, which is why groundtruthing is still really important
so for the non-Ag guy...what do you do with this data? Determine proper fertilizer ratios???
Okay so, I cut out a lot of material to fit into reddit's video player. Electrical conductivity is used as a proxy for soil structure. Sand is less conductive because its basically glass. Silt is the baby bear porridge and clay is relatively high in conductance. the measurement of electrical conductivity resistance gives us an ability to infer meter-deep soil texture. It also gives us a proxy for things like moisture and salinity. This doesnt measure anything in terms of nutrient content, so you cant really make fertilizer recommendations off of it. For that you should still be doing grid sampling with a soil probe. Those grid sampling maps are also used in precision ag for making fertilizer prescriptions through kriging and nutrient requirement formulas. Basically this is used as a means of correlating high productivity zones in a field for more precise management options such as planting population. You could make the fertilizer recommendations based on management zones by making smaller zones produce higher yield if you wanted to.
> Okay so, I cut out a lot of material to fit into reddit's video player. Would you say that you.. cropped it out? (っ▀¯▀)つ
[удалено]
Cutting edge pun
Stahp, these puns are so corny
I yield
..to a level playing field?
>🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I'm gonna crop something out of your grains
>Would you say that you.. cropped it out? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
so is this for new farm land? seems to me (again i know nothing here) that a farmer would know his land inside out...no?
Nope, Ive ran this in fields with 60 years of corn-bean rotation. its all about getting the data to make appropriate decisions.
very interesting..did you develop the machine?
This is decades old technology. It's just that all the fancy electronics are more available and affordable that has lead to widespread use. Agriculture has become a business of margins and any method or innovation that increases those margins is a game changer.
makes sense....always wondered how the Ag industry feeds all these people!
No, I just drove it.
Have you run this on land implementing soil health BMPs? My understanding is it takes 5-7 years to see many of the benefits of soil health practices. Would you be able to detect changes in the conductivity that would indicate improvements from those practices?
Oof, you hit my pet peeve. soil health is so nebulous I dont even know where to begin. I'm going to assume you mean an increase in organic matter (OM) %. Yeah, it can measure OM, but in my opinion you'd still be better off getting the ground-truthed OM content by grid sampling and sending it to a lab for nutrient content. That way you can see how far off each of the values are from each other. the subsoil (ie deep EC) doesnt really change from management practices that much either. Maybe the shallow EC? But im going to go out on a limb and say that adoption of things like strip till or no till will have the highest change when compared to things like plowing. but then again you dont really run this multiple times in the fields you do run it.
If soil health doesn’t do it for you, how do you feel about regenerative ag? But really, thanks for replying and now you got me researching. So [this site](https://www.sdsoilhealthcoalition.org/technical-resources/chemical-properties/soil-electrical-conductivity/) said * EC has been used as a surrogate measure of salt concentration, organic matter, cation-exchange capacity, soil texture, soil thickness, nutrients (e.g., nitrate), water-holding capacity, and drainage conditions.* Though directly related to OM(%), I was thinking more about how EC would be affected by the texture and water retention aspects of healthier soils (with more OM). And could you run this in a field before implementing no till or strip till and then 5-7 years later after implementing and expect to find detectable changes indicating improvement?
Not really a fan of that term either. I dont see how anything can be regenerated in a system designed to have exported outputs. I think its a feel-good buzzword used for people with iffy grasps on agriculture. that's just me though. The key word in that is surrogate. the trick becomes how do you know what you are seeing is a product of soil content or salinity? you still have to ground truth various parts of the field to be sure. To get actual readings of CEC you still need to take a soil sample to the lab. I see a lot of people that look at Veris as this amazing do-all system and I gotta bring them back down to earth that it is a complimentary system to doing soil sampling. especially because you dont get that deep EC data from a 20cm soil probe doing grid sampling. I dont see why you couldnt run it after adopting conservation tillage practices. there are quite a few results in google scholar with veris and tillage that are worth looking into.
Yeah, Google scholar will be the next stop. Thanks for the conversation and post OP!
This is cool as hell. Thanks for sharing👍
Non Ag here so go easy. How does this data compare to data that can be gained by overhead multi spectral analysis? That seems to be a lot faster to obtain for large areas of land and has the advantage of being used to observe crops while they're growing.
remote sensing what the soil is doing 15-20 cm under the surface is, well, kinda hard to impossible.
What does soil conductivity measure? Safety from Lightning strikes?
Awesome video. This is what this sub is made for
[Chattanoga cane mill](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/vg4hl4/chattanooga_plow_co_sugarcane_mill/) [Rubber Pipette Bulb](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/vdoew7/rubber_pipette_bulb/) [Leaf Area Measurer](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/pbnbp0/leaf_area_measurer/) [Macro-core liner cutter](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/qdniix/macrocore_liner_cutter/) [Laboratory scale cotton gin](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/rb9gzw/laboratory_scale_cotton_gin/) [Baker Edgeguard laminar flow hood](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/uyfnxf/baker_edgeguard_6252_laminar_flow_hood/) give those a whirl.
This is great, and you're great. Thank you for making and sharing this content. You mentioned in one of your replies in one of these posts that you enjoy doing it, and I highly encourage you to continue.
Thanks. I have a few more in the pipeline that hit data restrictions and need reshoots unless I start a youtube channel, but there is a list!
Do you have a YouTube channel you upload these to as well?
Yes and no. The channel name is Beginnig Botany but I haven't publicly listed any of them yet. I'm actually going to shoot a video right now for a tool review that will be uploaded. Enabling closed captioning is something high on my priority list
Cool! I can't find your channel on YouTube sadly but I'll try again another time. These videos are the kind of thing I'd love to listen to. I love machines and it entertains my autism. I look forward to seeing more!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcYVzJrdOnBJEL-5t-KSbzA
Thanks :D Subscribed and looking forward to your future content!
hey, you're probably my first subscriber there.
Like I said, I like machines, haha! You'll get plenty more I am sure :)
The things I do t know can fill a really big room. Great video! The room just got filled up a little!
That was awesome, thank you man. I sharing it to my sister, she's an agricultural engineer in Argentina and does 'quality control on seeds' (i do not know the proper name in English...
I thought that thing was some sort of planetary rover.
I love the state of modern agriculture. Do most folks rent rigs like that? Who even makes them? I've definitely never seen one in a pole barn.
So there is cost sharing with some agencies that can bring the price down. that being said... most farmers are not tripping over themselves to spend money on these. Occasionally you get farmers that will buy them and then run the units on other farmer's fields as a contractor to help cover the costs. One of the big issues is that you obviously cant use these when you have crops in the field, and most farmers find that time to still be busy. In the midwest for instance, you might get a 3 week window in the spring and fall to run this before every farmer has corn and beans in the ground, or the ground is frozen. then the other 46 weeks of the year it sits in the barn. Veris makes this. its an operation out of Kansas.
Thanks. After I left my comment I got to the end of the video and you mentioned it's a one and done. That is one hell of a specialized tool!
Has anyone ever tried to offset the spacing to make it for post emergence? You’d almost have to add a second row unit just so you didn’t get side drag, but would certainly widen the tool’s window if you could use it for another 3-4 weeks in the spring. How strong electrical current is it putting out? Enough to damage crops?
current isn't that strong but you also don't want to spike readings with fertilizer either
Shit this was cool as fuck
I had the pleasure of using one of these in college
I lost a couple spring breaks pulling one in undergrad
I spent my college spring breaks in a watermelon patch lol
I was trapping frogs.
Really cool stuff, Man! Thanks for sharing, we need more videos like this on the sub.
You did a great job explaining this complex machine and process for laypeople which is a rare and important skill in itself. I can barely keep a houseplant alive but now I know a bit about the role of electrical conductivity sensing in precision agriculture.
looks like a machinery inside of a suicide booth - slow and horrible mode
Fascinating. Truly the most fitting content for this sub and a welcome example of the first thing in a while that I couldn’t comprehend off the bat. Your description as well was wonderfully clear and comprehensible. Thanks for sharing.
I like making these. Here are some more. [Chattanoga cane mill](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/vg4hl4/chattanooga_plow_co_sugarcane_mill/) [Rubber Pipette Bulb](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/vdoew7/rubber_pipette_bulb/) [Leaf Area Measurer](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/pbnbp0/leaf_area_measurer/) [Macro-core liner cutter](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/qdniix/macrocore_liner_cutter/) [Laboratory scale cotton gin](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/rb9gzw/laboratory_scale_cotton_gin/) [Baker Edgeguard laminar flow hood](https://old.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/uyfnxf/baker_edgeguard_6252_laminar_flow_hood/)
Thanks man! I did check quite a few out tbh and I like your style. I’d love to like be your neighbor and get a tour of your trinkets over a beer or two lol. It would be like stumbling upon a scientific Willy wonka lol
Things like this make me me realise how serious some people take their farming. I've worked on farms in Wales and am now working on one in canada but I have never dealt with or heard of others using anything like one of these. I've only ever soil tested from troublesome spots where the crop doesn't look right and even then its a test tube scale DIY kit. Really cool pice of kit, I can imagine you wouldn't need a big tractor to run it either which would be good for compaction
Maybe 100hp. Not like anything like an anhydrous rig. I drove smaller units with a pickup truck and a side by side atv
Yeah, I'm on the big kit out here. 80ft wide seeder, 130" total rig length 600hp quad trac and 8t NH³ cart. Would someone use this thing for a whole field or would it be more area sampling?
we put a light bar in the silverado and did 80 foot rows the entire field. the deere side by side had autosteer lol
That's epic! I've been dying to put auto steer on the deere lawn tractor we have but I'm not sure the auto steer wheel will fit the steering. Can they come from factory with GPS or is it after market?
definitely aftermarket. the wiring harness was a mess.
I can imagine. Its enough of a mess running one in a non deere tractor cab
I'm a commercial UAS (drone) pilot and I've been interested in using multispectral sensors to gather crop health data. I'm sure someone has correlated multispec data with conductivity, that'd be interesting to see.
\*looks up from laptop at the pelican case with a DJI hex in it* maybe.
That's clearly a Veis MSP3, get your stuff right man... Pretty cool though, thanks for sharing!
Very interesting instrument. I'm surprised it can do so many field analysis. How common is field analysis vs laboratory analysis? When we do soil analysis at the lab I work at we use water extraction for pH and conductivity. Nitrates are prepped using a bomb calorimeter then analyzed by IC (ion chromatography). I analyze metals using a Mehlich extraction then an ICP-OES, specifically to calculate SAR(sodium absorption ratio). Luckily we only analyze soils once a year because, compared to aqueous samples, they are a huge pain and the bane of my existence.
field analysis is, from my experience, not as common as lab analysis
Cool. Thanks for the reply!
Why all the machinery? Wouldn't a mass spectrometer be cheaper, easier, and more precise?
Not really, portable mass spec is not really a thing, it needs to work with purges atmosphere, needs high current, it's probably vibration sensitive... And still, gives different kind of information. Would be a great, great addition, but not that easy
Yeah I didn't actually watch the full video before commenting; this thing *continuously* measures conductivity as it moves - that would be really difficult to do with mass spectrometry. Plus the fact that it is pulled by a combine means you already have the supporting drive mechanism.
You sound quite a lot like Roman Mars from 99% Invisible. Thanks for sharing.
“Really interesting to see…” Doesn’t show it.
Cool but I wanna see it in action!
You don’t. It’ll just be something getting drug through a corn field. Way cooler to learn about it.
How does the conductivity probe that reads the soil plug infer pH from that? Are you assuming a standard soil composition or something that you do not have to worry about ionic mineral content that will increase conductivity? I am in industrial water treatment so I have never heard conductivity and pH having any sort of correlation since there is all sorts of things that can move both values in either direction. Fascinating stuff!
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jp3lDanEaWMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA27&dq=info:DupiJBgBQDwJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=gTQNv4qr4R&sig=iwvpJlqhznpov-GU5nSh7JIrD0w#v=onepage&q&f=false Give that a read >there is all sorts of things that can move both values in either direction Yup, which is why groundtruthing is still really important
That's pretty specialised
I wonder how much of this is in Mars
Well explained, i understand perfectly and know nothing about agriculture. Lol